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The internet that connects computers and all the awesome things we could do with it were demonstrated in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_

The internet that connects computers and all the awesome things we could do with it were demonstrated in 1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos Since 16 years later, in 1984 we still did not have Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Hacker News, the internet is obviously useless. Oh wait, it's 57 years later and we DO use the internet ...

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kmeisthax 2y ago
NLS, the system demoed in the Mother of All Demos, was a lot less well known in 1984 than it is now and I doubt anyone expected it to be delivered by packet-switched IP or HTTP (which didn't even exist yet). In 1984 the big hype was ISDN - digital telephony to the home - and all the wonky (and expensive) special services and gadgets you could layer on top of a whole two digital circuits. What killed that future was a combination of corporate ineptitude[0] and government action to kill AT&T's monopoly before AT&T got big enough to just buy out the US government. The thing about the Internet is that while it was invented very early on, it wasn't accessible until far later. The Internet was a DARPA project that had escaped into college campuses. You needed a hookup at a local college campus in order to even access it. In fact, USENET users refer to the time when normal people could just sign up to AOL and get Internet access as "the Eternal September" because it was an immediate and measurable cultural change. I think it's fair to say that the Internet before September 1993 was a fundamentally different concept than what was available afterwards, and for most people, that is when the Internet launched. September 1993 to 2009 takes us from "hey AOL has these funny new 'Internet' forums" to "tweeting on my iPhone in the bathroom". Other NLS ideas have similar trajectories. The mouse saw use in workstations but it took Apple and the Macintosh to try and actually make a mouse-driven computer for ordinary consumers. Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu was getting plenty of Autodesk money in 1984, but the hypertext protocol we actually use, HTTP, was invented at CERN in 1991. A lot of technologies are good ideas being held back by a world that isn't ready for them yet. Blockchain finance[1] is more akin to Xanadu or ISDN: something that exists because it's creators would be rich if it took off rather than because it has some obvious value to it. It runs off hype. As a regular Internet user, it actually provides negative value, because the people who actually gain value from having a financial system with nobody to tell you no[2] are literal scammers and thieves. [0] ISDN was notoriously poorly rolled out in the US, as BRI lines had been priced as a business service. Most people didn't need two lines over one wire and all the other usages of ISDN were purely speculative. Other countries whose local phone companies didn't have their heads up their asses actually did manage to sell it on the basis of clearer calls. [1] Being very specific here in case someone shouts "Git is a blockchain, your argument is invalid" [2] Well, unless what you want to do is raise the base block size of Bitcoin, then there's plenty of people who will tell you 'no'.
- ArtTimeInvestor 2y ago
  the Internet is that while it was invented very early on, it wasn't accessible until far later Same with blockchain. There isn't even a good way to self-custody yet. As soon as you start talking to "not your keys, not your coins" people about the pitfalls of self-custody you end up in an absurd discussion about homemade approaches involving using dice to create private keys, setting up multisig using hardware from different brands and keeping the devices in different locations around the world. And none of these approaches really provide good security. But that does not mean there is no way to do self-custody in a safe manner. It has just not been ironed out yet.

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kmeisthax 2y ago

NLS, the system demoed in the Mother of All Demos, was a lot less well known in 1984 than it is now and I doubt anyone expected it to be delivered by packet-switched IP or HTTP (which didn't even exist yet). In 1984 the big hype was ISDN - digital telephony to the home - and all the wonky (and expensive) special services and gadgets you could layer on top of a whole two digital circuits. What killed that future was a combination of corporate ineptitude[0] and government action to kill AT&T's monopoly before AT&T got big enough to just buy out the US government. The thing about the Internet is that while it was invented very early on, it wasn't accessible until far later. The Internet was a DARPA project that had escaped into college campuses. You needed a hookup at a local college campus in order to even access it. In fact, USENET users refer to the time when normal people could just sign up to AOL and get Internet access as "the Eternal September" because it was an immediate and measurable cultural change. I think it's fair to say that the Internet before September 1993 was a fundamentally different concept than what was available afterwards, and for most people, that is when the Internet launched. September 1993 to 2009 takes us from "hey AOL has these funny new 'Internet' forums" to "tweeting on my iPhone in the bathroom". Other NLS ideas have similar trajectories. The mouse saw use in workstations but it took Apple and the Macintosh to try and actually make a mouse-driven computer for ordinary consumers. Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu was getting plenty of Autodesk money in 1984, but the hypertext protocol we actually use, HTTP, was invented at CERN in 1991. A lot of technologies are good ideas being held back by a world that isn't ready for them yet. Blockchain finance[1] is more akin to Xanadu or ISDN: something that exists because it's creators would be rich if it took off rather than because it has some obvious value to it. It runs off hype. As a regular Internet user, it actually provides negative value, because the people who actually gain value from having a financial system with nobody to tell you no[2] are literal scammers and thieves. [0] ISDN was notoriously poorly rolled out in the US, as BRI lines had been priced as a business service. Most people didn't need two lines over one wire and all the other usages of ISDN were purely speculative. Other countries whose local phone companies didn't have their heads up their asses actually did manage to sell it on the basis of clearer calls. [1] Being very specific here in case someone shouts "Git is a blockchain, your argument is invalid" [2] Well, unless what you want to do is raise the base block size of Bitcoin, then there's plenty of people who will tell you 'no'.

ArtTimeInvestor 2y ago
the Internet is that while it was invented very early on, it wasn't accessible until far later Same with blockchain. There isn't even a good way to self-custody yet. As soon as you start talking to "not your keys, not your coins" people about the pitfalls of self-custody you end up in an absurd discussion about homemade approaches involving using dice to create private keys, setting up multisig using hardware from different brands and keeping the devices in different locations around the world. And none of these approaches really provide good security. But that does not mean there is no way to do self-custody in a safe manner. It has just not been ironed out yet.